A Year in Review: 2018’s Writerly Resolutions

For 2018, I decided to make a writing-based resolution. My goal was to submit to every magazine within two major publishing imprints: Cricket Media and the Highlights Group. That meant submitting my writing to seven different magazines for children (Cricket, Spider, Ladybug, Babybug, Highlights, High Five, and Hello).

In the interest of transparency and ownership over my successes and failures, I’ve decided to share a number of statistics pertaining to my writing ventures in 2018.

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Total number of submissions in 2018: 37

• Fiction submissions in 2018: 17
• Poetry submissions in 2018: 16
• Nonfiction submissions in 2018: 3
• Craft submissions in 2018: 2

Place of submission

• Total number of submissions to Cricket Media in 2018: 12
  • Cricket: 2
  • Spider: 3
  • Ladybug: 3
  • Babybug: 4
• Total number of submissions to Highlights group in 2018: 10
  • Highlights: 4
  • High Five: 3
  • Hello: 3
• Total number of submissions to miscellaneous literary magazines: 16

Intended audience

• Submissions for children: 25
• Submissions for adults: 13

Number of submissions by month

• January: 12
• February: 13
• March: 2
• April: 0
• May: 3
• June: 1
• July: 5
• August: 2
• September: 0
• October: 0
• November: 0
• December: 0

Acceptances and rejections

• Acceptances: 7
• Rejections: 30
• No reply: 1

Rejections by type

• Form rejections: 27
• Personal rejections: 3

Longest response time

9 months, 21 days (rejection with invitation to revise and resubmit)

Shortest response time

One hour (acceptance)

Accepted pieces

• “Iggy Flint” (poem) | Forthcoming in Cricket
• “Changeling” (flash fiction | Read it here at Enchanted Conversations Magazine
• “Still Don’t” (tweet) | Read it here at Nanoism
• “If Geese Could Spell” (poem)| Forthcoming in Highlights High Five
• “Giraffe Cord-keeper” (craft) | Forthcoming in Highlights
• “Dashiell’s Dress” (fiction) | Forthcoming in Spider
• “Chalk Dust” (poem) | Forthcoming in Highlights Hello

Lessons learned

• It takes a long time to hear back from magazine publishers.
• It takes even longer to actually be published.
• I am best at keeping New Year’s resolutions during the first two months of the year.
• Having a job where I need to be at work all day really affects how much writing and submitting I accomplish.
• I must have thick skin because REJECTION HURTS.
• BUT SERIOUSLY, WHY DON’T THEY LOVE ME?
• MY PARENTS THOUGHT THAT PIECE WAS REALLY NICE, THOUGH.
• Acceptance eases the bitter sting of the aforementioned rejections…but only a little.
• Writing for children’s magazines is not necessarily the way to garner fame and fortune.
• (Especially fortune.)
• I still don’t actually know what I’m doing.
• But I think, having reviewed the numbers, that I can safely say that I met my 2018 writing resolution.

What should my writing resolution for 2019 be?